It’s not infinitely better that the only commander tag on a map can keep a significant portion of the manpower for your side tied up wandering aimlessly in enemy territory without actually trying to take anything or defend what you already have, or even engaging the enemy, but rather endlessly re-stacking and fleeing in an ineffectual zerg ball.
We can’t fix the fact that for some reason a large number of people turn their brains off and mindlessly flock to the nearest blue triangle, but we could fix whether or not there is a triangle on the map for them to flock to.
Quite frankly; managing to kitten off a hundred people enough to make them pay to spend their only vote against you within a set time period pretty much means you may not need to be running a tag.
With how many more blue triangles have been popping up lately, I really have started to wish we could vote to remove tags from habitually bad commanders. Something like 1 gold to vote and 100 votes = tag stripped, and they can pay 100 gold again in a month for a new tag. The cycle repeats either until they learn or run out of cash, or the server populace does. Also, you are capped at one vote a month on top of the cost to keep abuse to a minimum.
They still get a chance to learn and become better without having the blue tag attracting enough numbers to them to overcome their bad decision making and reinforcing bad habits.
It’s not horrible, but it’s far from amazing. If you take Flesh of the Master they have far more HP. They also explode when they die if you take the death nova trait, giving poison and a sizable amount of damage.
Along with the slight toughness gain I DO believe ((Don’t take my word for it)) They siphon health along with your other minions if you take the lower tier siphon traits.
They are decent for MM builds, suck for EVERYTHING else.
Also a while back I ran apothecary+wells and marks build. I could EASILY keep 5 up with mark of blood and well of blood. It was rather funny.
Having to build in a specific manner to make them useful points to Reanimator and Protection of the Horde needing to be either optional like most of the other MM-focused traits, or somehow making the planets align in accordance with prophecy in order to make them useful to all builds.
Fractal relics are worthless after a point. I suggest the relic golem sell a miniature kitty-golem pet that costs an obscene number of relics. I will not rest until I have such a thing.
It has to make the meow noise. I’m serious >:(
Let us use them to buy the runes from the regular dungeons.
Just the runes. The skins can stay dungeon locked for all I care.
I think that enemies spawning over a wider area might be a good idea when things scale higher, so players will spread out more. More directions/losing immunity sooner maybe…
I’m not a balance designer :P
This. Having the spawns space out more and more as the events scale up makes it harder without having to use as much overkill numbers or hp by simply making it not as easy to stack so many AE’s in one main spot to overwhelm the mobs, as well as taking players by surprise more often if they are just half consciously spamming 1.
You could interleave this with Champions summoning reinforcements in a wider ring around themselves to help insure that they are relevant without having to resort immediately to mass hordes or massive hp.
How about new Plague Form utilities in the 4th and 5th slots? One could apply Torment and Weakness. The other could be just Fear… over and over, again. (^_^)
Based on how fast people dodge roll away when they notice a Necro Plague forming near them, it almost has Fear built in already.
I’d like a 4th ability called “infect” that attached the current active toggle onto a targeted nearby enemy as a hostile aura. If you attached all 3 toggles you drop plague form but the attached toggles last for the remainder of the normal Plague form duration.
Technically not an exception if it instead of a separate boost it modifies the speed boost that swiftness gives.
More long cast times are the last thing the class needs.
I stood mostly at max range with longbow and pet
this really doesn’t help the stigma towards rangers
Can the pet dodge? Nope. I noticed when helping clear the leftover spider spawns that it was a magnet for more than we intended to pull to begin with, and having it up in the tree’s grill tended to make even more spawn.
So yes, the pet was technically detrimental based on what was observed and I was joining to help complete the dungeon, not combat social injustice.
And I usually use my pet and run axe/torch, but it was not working out in this situation so I adapted and we overcame.
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Some guild members and I cheesed it recently by ranging the tree from the room entrance; composition was Ranger, Elementalist, Guardian, and a lowbie Engineer. 4 man unoptimized group for this encounter.
They initially wiped 3 manning the dungeon on the final boss, so I joined in to help on my Ranger alt.
We pulled as many of the spiders as we could to clear the room then proceeded as follows:
I stood mostly at max range with longbow and pet on passive, pew pewing the tree and trying to dodge whenever the tree did its green cloud seizure thing. The Ele switched between assisting me and helping the Engineer dps down what adds did respawn during the fight, the Guardian gathered up any incoming spiders and kited them back to where the rest of us were to help burn them down as well. I used healing spring liberally to help keep the poison spam to a minimum, and the Ele assisted with water finishers to top off healing.
It took a while, and was a wildly un-optimal method, but it worked.
Coming away from that, two key issues I have with the fight:
1) Spiders not despawning on wipe. That just causes anti-learning through demoralization.
2) It is not intuitive to dodge a tree having a seizure halfway across the room. If there were particle effects indicating otherwise, they were not clear enough to communicate the need to do so until too late.
Other than that, the fight was more than manageable.
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Torch. Would be nice to have access to Burn in some thematic manner that does not involve crits.
Failing that, a Greatsword; could work well if the skills were some dark power based inverse of Guardian Staff:
1: short range cone/wave
2: Lifesteal/corruption orb
3: Crippling mark
4: pbae retaliation buff
5: pull ability
Once AC’s are forced to deploy in more vulnerable spots in order to be used, they won’t dominate so badly compared to other options for defending a fortification.
ACs would be useless then, except for the singular task of firing arrows at the gate, which only works because they’re still breaking los.
People manning siege are immobile, without active defenses or healing, they will usually lose to people throwing AOEs. Part of the point of ACs is to give defenders SOMETHING they can do to harass a big attack force. Any change to AC needs to keep this in mind.
I put ballistas on the edge of tower walls all the time, and half the time they get destroyed without anyone ever manning them. Another quarter of the time they get off a shot or two before mass AOE renders them unuseable, and the other quarter of the time they are marginally effective.
ACs would probably be even worse off.
EDIT:
what if ACs worked like mortars but were even deadlier?
More vulnerable =/= within range of 0900-1200 range player attacks. More vulnerable means you have to actually deploy them in a spot that can get counter-sieged by say, a ballista or catapult. The issue is both of those have to obey either line of sight or projectile physics while the arrow cart that should be their natural prey does not, and as such usually requires treb spam to clear them out.
But if you have enough trebs to do that, you are often better off just taking down a gate or wall and clearing them in melee.
Another part of the issue with wall mounted siege getting blasted is that walls are both too thin and the merlons are too low to provide cover against AE’s lapping over them, plus there are rarely any effective moats to prevent/slow attackers from getting into range to drop AE’s on top of the walls.
Someone got them to buy into trying to beat WoW by becoming WoW, which is a foolish mistake investors keep helping developers commit for nearly a decade now. You don’t beat WoW by becoming it, you beat WoW by not trying to beat WoW.
Many of us are tired of companies insisting on chasing that particular dragon and leaving us strung out.
They are good in builds where perma-swiftness isn’t an easy option, because it frees you up from having to have Locust Signet. This is a two fold benefit in that while you lose some raw base condition damage; you gain incalculable damage and mitigation back in that you can get in and out of range more easily without a signet or ability cool-down to deal with. Mobility is king in fights that are not a cramped cage match.
So Necros have these main (decent) on demand mobility options now:
Warhorn
Locust Signet
Spectral Walk
Runes of the Traveler (Suggestion: take Blood is Power as a replacement for Locust)
(I didn’t count Speed runes because their bonuses don’t align as well with Necro, plus, bugged. Wurm and Dark Path blow goats.)
Edit: As a closing note, did people actually think Necros would get a speed bonus on runes without having to give up something?
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If they want to get away from the meta being dominated by burst/focus fire variants; not only are they going to have to reign in top end damage but they are going to have to go after movement speed/swiftness.
Thought people screamed when Necros got condition burst? Wait till that happens.
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I’ve met and like Tybalt. I don’t like how overdone the silliness is in the overall game right now.
It will stay high or rise as long as there is a steady high source of gold generation compared to things to spend it on that remove (remove, not exchange) gold from the economy.
Supply. Demand.
Prismatic Understanding boon share mesmers could benefit as well.
Or any build that gets a damage bonus per boon.
Celestial was already niche even with the MF bonus. Taking that away without some form of direct stat compensation is not helping.
These also apply when on a havoc team in WvW, most people these days know to focus the Necro almost immediately. Dire will help to make that an inefficient use of the other team’s alpha strike.
Or give us a “compact” button at least.
I just hope they add more skin options for those of use that would really prefer an Ascended item that isn’t as overly ornate/clunky/WoW’ish. Less goof, more grit.
Whether is has an ICD and the boon durations are the important thing to know, for example if it had a 5 sec ICD and the boons only 2 sec duration, most will consider it near worthless even if they are rocking +100% boon duration.
The worth of one of these is otherwise is dependent on the class and build it is being used in; some classes have a hard time generating any boons at all, so an item source of them is extra valuable.
It doesn’t help when some of the Twisted veterans can be nearly as hard as a Champion of another type yet rarely drop anything worth the effort.
That’s been the key for me as well, hopping into the zone immediately and not dawdling. Have only gotten an empty overflow a couple times, and most of those I was either disconnected/crashed from an active one, or I took my sweet time getting there.
Can’t help but wonder if the removal of culling has laid bare a previously hidden memory leak.
AC damage is fine, just make them obey some sort of projectile physics so that people can’t put them in areas that prevent retaliation while being able to rain death freely. That fixes the whole camera hack issue.
Once AC’s are forced to deploy in more vulnerable spots in order to be used, they won’t dominate so badly compared to other options for defending a fortification.
Outside of that, to solve the zerging and unbalanced population issue, Arenanet is going to have to look into both better logistics modeling and more incentives to spread out when in a zone and incentives to transfer to lower pop servers.
There’s one particular build variant that is causing a lot of caterwauling from those on the receiving end of it, and most the other builds range from “acceptable with your team babysitting you” to “why bother, another class does it better”.
This reminds me of a funny picture.
I personally would not mind some male shaped robot warriors to protect us. They must have abs, a cute booty and strong arms.
BWahahahah! Hulk gonewild!
That kitten’s hilarious!
And the recharge is atrocious; especially since the kitten thing practically requires the planets to align just right in order to do what it is supposed to do.
That’s the funniest part: it fails so often and takes so long to hit its target anyway that I sometimes forget I even used it until I suddenly teleport.
I often port to the wrong target (when it works at all) because it moves slow enough someone else can get in the way.
Joy.
It prevents you from doing anything other than running away or using instant CC/condition cleanses. So in that regard Fear/Terror is a CC.
The Devs really need to get off the fence on whether Fear/Terror is a condition or CC; because until they do it’s always going to cause massive balance issues.
And that’s assuming you were even given time to tell which way is is the safe way to dodge…
If you can even see the cues in the first place….
The “learning” thing is less than helpful when you can’t see what is the right action. Between latency and the awful camera, there needs to be a bit more leeway in the content; plus as also noted why have defensive stats at all if you can’t rely on them? That alone is a major failing in the content design.
And the recharge is atrocious; especially since the kitten thing practically requires the planets to align just right in order to do what it is supposed to do.
Another option is to simply just allow us to regen/siphon/heal HP while in DS and give access to our slotted utilities. Then going into DS while getting focused and low on health is not quite the death sentence it is now.
Smart play would allow a Necro to ablate damage using either DS or HP as the situation warrants, as well as using their skills and traits to support that synergy in a manner that other classes are able to with their class mechanics, but is currently denied to Necros.
Again, these are just my views. I think ANet really needs to look into what can be done with returning the Necromancer to the aggressive gameplay (which oddly involves boosting their defense options).
You are not alone in the thought that to encourage Necro offensive game-play their defense option need to be up to snuff:
As much as I like trench-coats, the lack of variety in the medium armor models in the low to medium levels is getting….no HAS long been, monotonous.
Also, want light armor trousers+tunics for males and females. You can even make them skin tight to pander to the masses, just something that isn’t another kitten dress/skirt.
Also, also, get some people on making and remaking armor that doesn’t look like crap on Charr anatomy. kthx. Here’s a hint: they need their own mesh and textures, not hurried deformed crap shoehorned in.
Also also also, let up buy skins piecemeal if we want. Not letting us do so is losing you gem sales you might have otherwise gotten.
also make sure you have all the difficulty tier boxes checked when trying to discover something; some won’t work unless you do.
…might have happened to me yesterday.
We are Dhuumed.
Plus people aren’t bringing up the strengths because currently they do not make up for the weaknesses.
Having a huge pile of HP means jack all in a game where massive damage and avoidance are king. Why else would “optimal” dungeon teams be mostly ’zerker geared?
Because the majority of classes have enough reliable tools to avoid one-shot damage or damage period to the point that they do not need defensive stats.
Sure a Necro has tools that could prevent a massive attack from landing (Blind) or made at all (Fear)….
But those have reduced effectiveness to no effectiveness on Champions; or the incoming damage simply does not have a to-hit check or is not aggro dependent and still requires far more foreknowledge of what the enemy is about to do to apply them in a timely enough manner to have at best a chance of working.
Yes. It gets you killed a lot in WvW as a Necro when you try to use it to soak hits when you are getting assist trained, since not only is there a delay, but most your skills that might help you get some breathing room also have a longer animation time than the enemy damage and CC skills that are inevitably incoming.
To be even remotely balanced; DS not only has to last as long as the avoidance from damage spikes other classes get, but it also has to outlast the duration any CC that will get included in the damage spike, because Necros also don’t get the same level of options of avoiding/ablating CC that other classes get.
And that’s assuming Necros get a similar level of offense out of the box compared to other classes.
If we get less damage, then DS needs to last even longer as a defensive measure to compensate.
To be fair, with the amount of water field blast healing they have access to, an Elementalist specced for it is kind of a special case outlier.
If you ignore that is one of the more effective and thus often used specs.
Is there a reason it has to be limited to deathshroud? And does the solution have to be so convoluted? The main issue is having multiple targets attacking the necro and burning them down while the necro can’t defend itself.
In other games when classes are designed this way, the limited mobility they do have tends to be very good. Why isn’t that the case here? Why isn’t stability and stun breaking more common for this class?
If you want an easy solution outside of shroud, why not just allow necromancers to detonate their wells knocking back targets. Each well could then do something else depending on the one sacrificed. One could chill, another could cause AE damage where they land, etc.
Now while I like a lot of where this thread is going, it seems needlessly complex. Why not just have it so when you leave deathshround you gain protection for 4 seconds?
Why not make it so when deathshroud expires as a result of life force being depleted (meaning you didn’t just turn it off) you gain protection and cast an PBAE knockback where targets are thrown back a distance depending on how much health you have when you leave deathshroud.
If you have 75% or greater, they’re thrown back 300 yards.
If you have 50% or greater, they are thrown back 600 yards.
If you have less than 50% they are thrown back 900 yards.This in conjunction with better life force generation (bleeds giving life force so you can gain some while in shroud, scepter generating life force on the second attack, etc) so you can use shroud more often would probably have a meaningful impact without being too complex or over-the-top.
Because the Devs have already stated they do not want to give us the same tools other classes get in order to escape/avoid focus fire.
Which leaves us with trying to make something every Necro gets access to regardless of build, a workable shield.
Right now DS is just a poor delay timer; in pvp if you were going to die before using it, you are most likely going to die even when using it, just adding a couple extra seconds because quite frankly the entire game design punishes trying to passively stat-tank incoming damage and effects.
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If the Champion mobs had something other than Hodor for AI, then they would not need to give them one shot attacks and defiant buffs to make them a threat, AND would make Necros or anyone else CC and condition dependent more useful.
And it would begin to heal the divide between pve and pvp, as the mobs could be weaker statistically, but far more ruthless in their actions.
Which is one of the key features that set GW1 apart from the other MMO’s back in the day.
Basically what I was going for; and it allows for potentially recovering from a CC+focusfire spike, which would put DS more on par with evade/block/dodge/boonstacking mechanics other classes get.
In large group engagements teams would have to make a choice to try to spike the enemy Necros immediately but potentially take too long to kill them leaving the other enemies free to act; or wait and have to face Necros still at near full strength after focusing their allies.
Not the current state where halfway intelligent opponents will always CC+assist train a Necro before anyone else if possible.
Hell put this on the Plague elite, a 4th button that attaches whatever mode you were last in on to an enemy as a debilitating aura for the remaining form duration and of course takes the caster out of Plague form.
Regardless of skill level there is currently no way for a necromancer to avoid being assist trained. This is the undeniable truth and sooner or later you will hit that wall as a necromancer and at that point you will have two choices. Keep slamming your head against it or reroll.
This is clearly an issue and should be addressed. While I fully understand that necromancers are very strong in duels the game should not be balanced around duels. It should be balanced around relevant content.
Ayup. That’s why I made this thread:
My preference would be to have all runes/sigils tradeable regardless of obtainment method, but for some reason the Dev team seems invested in making so many useful items BoP when adding more fluidity to the market should be a good thing.
Necros do tend to glaringly show how bad armor/hp/lf stats are overall in the current meta compared to the other more active tools.
The same tools that enable the “go zerker or go home” attitude to group gear composition in content because those tools allow near total damage avoidance; obviating the need for passive defense stats.
Quite frankly, there will always be an issue for Necros defensively compared to other classes as long as those tools are as powerful as they are.